F**king-A

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>It has been suggested to me that the "A" could have come from "affirmative"
>in the sense that the military usage of "affirmative" to mean "yes" or "you
>are correct" might have been been the inspiration.  "Fucking Affirmative,
>Sir!" shortened to "Fuckin'-A."
>
>Was "affirmative" a well-used military word in WWII and before?

"Affirmative" in the desired context has been conventional since Korea
certainly. I'm not sure about WW II.

This is one of several reasonable possibilities, I think.

Derivation from "A-OK" on the other hand appears implausible ... since
"f*cking-A" or equivalent seems to predate "A-OK" by at least a decade.

{Those offended by rank speculation or woolgathering should ignore the item
below.}

Another possibility (not my favorite because of Occam's razor) is that the
expression is so contracted that the original form is obscured. For
example, one could assume that Ron Butters' long form "you f*ckin' A John"
is actually an early form, later contracted; in this case my conjecture
would be that this might represent "U f*cking A J", an intensified version
of "U A J", an abbreviation of "you ain't joking/jiving" or so. [Compare
"f*cking-Able", an alternative form of "f*cking-A" with presumably military
"Able" for "A" (in HDAS). "U A" for "you ain't" appears in "U A W" =
"United Auto Workers" but once slang for something like "you ain't white,
you ain't working" IIRC (something like this is in Jonathon Green's slang
dictionary). Compare also "J" and "John" used interchangeably for "jack" in
poker, with "John" most likely just an elaboration of "J" IMHO. A variant
speculation would assign "John" = virtually homophonous "jawin'", thus "you
[f*cking] ain't [just] jawing".]

-- Doug Wilson